The percentage of Jews who said religion is important to them rose from 31 to 35 per cent since 2007, the Pew Research Center found. (Shutterstock)

NEW YORK (JTA) – Do you experience feelings of peace and well-being at least once a week? Did God write the Torah? Do you eat bacon?

If these questions seem a little personal, don’t fret. They’re all part of a new Pew Research Center survey on American religion released Tuesday that shows moderate declines in religious beliefs and behaviour among Americans generally, but growth among Jews in some key religious categories.

NEW YORK (JTA) – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a philosopher and member of the U.K. House of Lords who served as Britain’s chief Orthodox rabbi from 1991 to 2013, is in North America lecturing and promoting his latest book, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence.” He spoke with JTA in New York about his prolific writing pace — 25 books and counting along with a new line of Koren Sacks prayer books – the crises facing Jews today and whether Sacks, 67, would consider the presidency of Yeshiva University. [Read more…]

Germany is struggling to process and accommodate the 10,000 refugees streaming into the country every day. (Uriel Heilman)

BERLIN (JTA) – Israel’s government is in cahoots with Syrian President Bashar Assad. America wants to keep the Syrian civil war going for as long as possible. Russia is outmaneuvering the United States on the global stage.

Those are some of the viewpoints you’re likely to hear if you talk politics with Syrians pouring out of their war-torn country and into Europe. [Read more…]

NEW YORK (JTA) – The Riverdale Jewish Center (RJC) in New York has decided to keep in place Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, whose sauna chats with naked boys garnered headlines after an exposé in the New York Times in May. [Read more…]

Family members of Ali Saad Dawabsheh outside their home in a West Bank Palestinian village after an arson attack that killed the 18-month-old boy, July 31, 2015. Jewish extremists are suspected of setting the fire. (Oren Ziv/Getty Images)

(JTA) – There are some striking similarities between last week’s arson attack on a Palestinian home that killed an 18-month-old boy and last summer’s kidnapping and immolation of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Mohammed Abu Khdeir. [Read more…]

Hundreds turned out for a protest in Los Angeles against the Iran nuclear deal, July 26, 2015. (Peter Duke)

NEW YORK (JTA) – There have been three major polls of American Jews since the announcement of the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran – by the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, the Israel Project and J Street – all with significantly different results.

Two show U.S. Jewish support for the Iran nuclear deal outpacing opposition to the deal by 20 percentage points: 48-28 according to the Jewish Journal, and 60-40 according to J Street. The Israel Project survey showed slightly more opposition to the deal than support for it: 47 per cent against versus 44 per cent in favour. (By contrast, in a CNN poll this week of non-Jewish Americans, 52 per cent said the U.S. Congress should nix the deal, compared to 44 per cent who wanted it approved).

With these wildly divergent results, which poll should we believe? [Read more…]

Hundreds turned out for a protest in Los Angeles against the Iran nuclear deal, July 26, 2015. (Peter Duke)

NEW YORK (JTA) – When the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles came out with a strongly worded statement last week opposing the Iran nuclear deal, it became one of a handful of federations across the United States to stake out a clear position on the agreement. [Read more…]

Some of the thousands of demonstrators in New York City’s Times Square protesting the Iran deal, July 23, 2015. (Gabe Friedman)

NEW YORK (JTA) – Admit it: You might be wrong.

Yes, you have a strong view about whether the nuclear deal signed with Iran last week will spell catastrophe for Israel, or whether it’s the best of a range of bad options for dealing with Iran’s apparent pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

But we can’t predict the future, so we can’t know for sure whether this deal will be more or less effective at slowing Iran’s path to a bomb than the other extreme: a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. [Read more…]

(JTA) – The nuclear agreement signed this week between the U.S.-led group of six world powers and Iran raises as many questions as it answers. As critics and proponents dissect the details, here are six issues to consider. [Read more…]